PMID: 18404825Apr 12, 2008Paper

Advance in technical method and treatment for viral hepatitis

Rinsho byori. The Japanese journal of clinical pathology
Hiromitsu Kumada

Abstract

The dominant treatment used currently for hepatitis B is administration of interferon for 6 months or long-term administration of nucleic-acid analogs. However, since the response rate to interferon treatment is approximately only 30%, nucleic acid analogs are used primarily for the treatment of hepatitis B in our country. Among the nucleic-acid analogs, entecavir is associated with the lowest rate of emergence of mutants (approximately 3% for 3 years). On the other hand, combination therapy with interferon plus ribavirin is predominantly used in the treatment of chronic hepatitis C, and the response rate is approximately 50% in cases with genotype 1b infection and high viral loads and 90% in cases with genotype 2a/2b and high viral loads. Moreover, because interferon monotherapy has been shown to be associated with a 70% response rate in subjects with low viral loads regardless of the genotype, combined Peg-IFN plus ribavirin therapy and interferon monotherapy are mainly used for hepatitis C patients with high and low viral loads, respectively. beta-interferon is mainly used for preventing the development of cancer in patients with compensated cirrhosis, in addition to its use in cirrhosis patients with genotype 1b infection a...Continue Reading

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